Friday, March 21, 2008

Sir Joe Gibbs 1943-2008

Since Joe Gibbs passed away exactly a month ago and I definitely wasn’t on top of the breaking news I won’t go into the specifics of Sir Gibbs’ career – there are plenty of sites that succinctly sum up his life better than I ever could – I’m just going to take this space and explain why it took me so long to acknowledge this sad news, then I’ll quit my rambling and present the fruits of my nearly month long labor of love.

I was really saddened to hear of the passing of the great Joe Gibbs and I initially had the intention of whipping up a quick mix in his honor but once I started compiling music I realized this was going to be a daunting task. I mean… I had every intention of highlighting the contributions the man made to Jamaican music and due to the amount of wicked releases he had his hands in, the playlist was coming in at around 8 hours. Then I decided maybe I’d approach the tribute from a different angle by highlighting only his rocksteady productions. But there were far too many reggae tunes that I couldn’t not include them. I thought about doing a dub only compilation but again I kept coming around to another solid roots track so I couldn’t go that route either. So what I present to you, for your listening pleasure, is a 40 track "megamix" of a bunch of Joe Gibbs’ hits, mixed with their instrumental versions. I hope that my efforts haven’t been wasted and that it serves as a fitting memorial for a man who engineered and produced four decades of spectacular music.

I stumbled upon this wicked artwork of Joe Gibbs' store created by Edinburgh, Scotland illustrator & DJ Jerry Neville AKA Jeremyiah when looking for a Joe Gibbs photo for this post and it was too cool not to share. Check out more of his work here.

I don't know how accurate the counter on Zshare is but even if the mix was downloaded 20 times and I only got 3 comments I'd still be disappointed. It's one of the main reasons I've contemplated stopping this blog.

Awesome mix, thank you so much for sharing this stuff... I've been listening to reggae since the mid 70's but you have given me the opportunity to listen to so many sides that I have never heard before, both in this mix and in other mixes.

Is there any chance you could do this mix but with the full length version of each song? I would be in complete heaven if you could..